Khlit
is Lamb's most inspired creation. A wandering Cossack hero, Khlit
defies conventional stereotypes: he is not a lover, nor is he
youthful or flamboyant. An excellent horseman, he is also a fine
swordsman, with a fine sword (the sword itself has an interesting
past, which Khlit only discovers as the series progresses), but he
isn't flashy. He is gruff and moody, but no anti-hero swathed in
shades of gray--he protects the innocent when it is in his power to
do so. He is a firm believer in swift, sharp justice and devout in
his faith, though not given to prayer or religious musings. It is his
keen wit that allows him to survive through countless treacheries and
intrigues. Aside from James Bond, who, when well-scripted, survives
by his intellect, there are no modern heroes with whom he may be compared.

Khlit
is already old when the series begins, and is forced into retirement
by his brother Cossacks within the first few stories. But Khlit is
hardly ready to take up life in a monastery with other aging
Cossacks, and rides off to see the world. In an article written for Pulpdom
magazine, Al Lybeck detailed the many lands visited by Khlit:
"Circumnavigating Central Asia, Khlit encounters Persians,
Turkomans, Uzbeks, Kallmarks, Chinese, Rajputs, Arabs--and frequently
at loggerheads. He travels the areas of Lake Baikal, Samarkand,
Hindustan, the Punjab and Kashmir, China, the river Kerulan, Tibet,
Afghanistan--here is the Grand Tour of the Border which so enthralled
Lamb. . . Overall, the series is more than adventure for its own
sake, it is a stirring and perceptive travelogue of little-known
history with sketches of the high and the low of those perilous times."

(Lybeck's
entertaining and informative article, published in 1996, discusses
many Lamb stories in detail, and can be purchased for a very small
fee from Pulpdom.)

The
Khlit stories are a pleasure even to a jaded reader, for they defy
predictability. Cycles of adventure stories written by most authors
become formulaic--not so the Khlit tales. While there are some
standard elements within them (Khlit surviving by his wits, or
sometimes teamed up with a independant woman), they are predictable
only in the consistency of Khlit himself. Rarely falling back on deus
ex machina, Lamb has Khlit escape from the complex situations in
which he finds himself, usually by clever stratagems which the reader
does not anticipate. If you often find that you can predict a story's
end or plotline within the first few pages, these stories (and Lamb's
fiction in general) will be a delight.

Robert
E. Howard, the creator of Conan and numerous other heroes, listed
Lamb as a favorite author, and one can certainly see Lamb's influence
in some of Howard's stories. Fritz Leiber may also have read some
Lamb, for the wanderings of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser have some
similarities to Khlit's own. Both Howard and Leiber wrote of sorcery
and imaginary worlds, whereas Lamb did not--but Lamb's settings are
so different to the modern Western reader that he might as well have
been writing of Burroughs' Mars.

It
is my contention that Lamb's fiction has cast a long shadow over the
entire fantasy genre, one that for the most part remains
unacknowledged. Readers of modern fantasy and sword and sorcery will
feel very much at home with Khlit.

All
of these stories have at last been collected by Bison Books in four
large volumes, and can be found in many bookstores as well as at Amazon.com.

The
following chart lists the stories in the Khlit cycle in order, and
indicates in what format they were published.

Title

Book
Appearance

Issue
of Adventure Magazine

1.

Khlit

The
Mighty Manslayer

Nov.
1 1917

2.

Wolf's
War

The
Mighty Manslayer

Jan.
1 1918

3.

Tal
Taulai Khan

The
Mighty Manslayer

Feb.
14 1918

4.

Alamut

The
Curved Saber

August
1 1918

5.

The
Mighty Manslayer

The
Curved Saber

Oct.
15 1918

6.

The
White Khan

The
Mighty Manslayer

Dec.
15 1918

7.

Changa
Nor

The
Curved Saber

Feb.
1 1919

8.

Roof
of the World

The
Curved Saber

April
15 1919

9.

The
Star of Evil Omen

The
Curved Saber

July
15 1919

10.

The
Rider of the Gray Horse

The
Curved Saber

Sept.
15 1919

11.

The
Lion Cub

The
Curved Saber

June
1 1920

12.

Law
of Fire

July
15 1920

13.

The
Bride of Jagannath

The
Curved Saber

Aug.
1 1920

14.

The
Masterpiece of Death

Sept.
15 1920

15.

The
Curved Sword

Nov.
1 1920

16.

Bogatyr

The
Curved Saber

Sept.30
1925

17.

White
Falcon

White
Falcon

Nov.30,
Dec. 10, 20 1925

18.

The
Winged Rider

The
Mighty Manslayer

Jan.
10 1926

19.

The
Wolf Master

Kirdy:
The Road out of the World

Dec.
8, 1926

The
FOUR stories "Law of Fire," "The Masterpiece of
Death," "The Bride of Jagannath," and "The Curved
Sword" feature Khlit teamed up with the formidable Abdul
Dost,
a Moslem swordsman who appears in his own cycle of stories. All of
these tales can now be found in the Bison collection Warriors
of the Steppes.

The
Curved Saber and The Mighty Manslayer

(Doubleday,
1964, Doubleday, 1969)

The
Curved Saber and The Mighty Manslayercollect
most of the Khlit stories. Unfortunately, both are out of print.
Editions are occasionally available on online book search services.
The smaller volume, The Mighty Manslayer, is still affordable,
and can even be found in paperback, but The Curved Saber is
rare enough and in high enough demand that it can be somewhat
expensive. The preceding chronological list of Khlit's adventures
details the contents of both volumes.

This
novel features an aged Khlit, his grandson Kirdy, Ayub,
and Demid.
Khlit bargains with Czar Boris Gudonov for the release of Demid and
his Cossack troop, the condition being that they must raid a Moslem
stronghold beyond the Aral Sea. Fast-paced and crammed with action,
this is one of Lamb's finest stories. It is now extremely hard to
come by. The hardback does not contain Lamb's introduction to the
piece, detailing the actual history behind the story, nor does it
contain the song of the Cossacks, both of which were printed in Adventure.

For
this novel Lamb bent his chronology somewhat--in two earlier tales
of Demid and Ayub it is stated quite clearly that Czar Gudonov is
dead, but he is very much alive here, and the events obviously take
place after those of the earlier Ayub and Demid adventures. Lamb
apparently found a story that was too good not to tell, and saw it
fitted for his existing characters. Being the stickler for historical
accuracy that he was, he set it at the proper time with the proper
Czar and ignored the slightly jarring inconsistency.

Kirdy:
The Road Out of the World

(Doubleday,
1933. Originally published as The Wolf Master in Adventure)

Khlit,
elderly by this time, appears only briefly in this novel, which is
centered around Kirdy's search for the false Czar, Dmitri. Dmitri has
betrayed a troop of Cossacks and Khlit's grandson tracks him from
place to place as the Czar's fortunes turn, encountering numerous
obstacles and winning the hand of the lovely Nada, granddaughter of
"The Wolf Master" along the way. I didn't find this story
as stirring as the others in this series, perhaps because I missed
wily old Khlit. It is a little easier to find than copies of White Falcon.
Kirdy also appears in "Bogatyr," "White Falcon,"
and "The Winged Rider."

The
last we hear of Khlit is in the final Ayub
story, The Outrider: "Khlit had vanished again, going off
somewhere alone after Kirdy was lost in the steppe." Readers of Kirdy,
of course, know that Kirdy found love in the steppe in the person of
Nada and wandered over the Himalayas with her, but we are left
wondering what becomes of Khlit. The elderly warrior by this time is
too weak to handle his famed saber, which he has turned over to
Kirdy. His one wish was to see Kirdy installed into the ranks of
Cossacks with which Khlit had ridden as a youth, and there is no
indication that Kirdy returned to do this. Surely Khlit would not
have been pleased that his grandson, a promising warrior, apparently
chose domestic bliss over a career like Khlit's own. Readers might
have wished a different end to the cycle, but perhaps it is best that
Khlit, whose home is the Steppe, disappears at last within it like an
old soldier fading away.